Steve Heaven <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >On Wed, 2007-05-09 at 10:07 +0100, Adrian Stott wrote: > >> However, let's assume that it *is* government policy to help those on >> low incomes go boating, and that it has found some money to spend >> achieving that. How should that money be spent to best effect? >> >> Reducing the price of boating (e.g. navigation charges, moorings, >> inspections) is a bad approach, because that reduces the price for >> everyone irrespective of his income. By doing this, the government >> would in effect subsidise every boater, including those who are able >> to afford market prices. > > >But this is the approach taken to allow access by those on low incomes >to other areas of our culture and heritage, e.g. free/subsidised entry >into museums art galleries etc.
I'm afraid that comparison is not helpful. The marginal cost for a museum operator of providing service to one more customer is almost nil. That is not the case for a moorings operator. "Richard Fairhurst" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >Adrian Stott wrote: >> Reducing the price of boating (e.g. navigation charges, moorings, >> inspections) is a bad approach, because that reduces the price for >> everyone irrespective of his income. By doing this, the government >> would in effect subsidise every boater, including those who are able >> to afford market prices. > >Some of us would argue that there's already a really ingenious >counterweight to such a subsidy. It's called income tax. Ingenious is not quite the word I would have chosen. Anyway, it has the major shortcoming that it does not provide the link between consumption and cost that a (market) price does, so you don't get the important feedback that limits demand to a level that the supply can accommodate. Since that is the problem we are trying to solve, I think including it in the proposed solution may be a little, er, impractical. BTW, I understand there is a rather large industry dedicated to helping people to avoid paying income tax? Adrian Adrian Stott 07956-299966
